With the massive success of HBO's Game of Thrones, every film and television studio seems to be looking for the next great fantasy epic. Amazon Prime has the first season of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series starring Rosamund Pike dropping next year. The streaming giant is also returning to Middle Earth with their upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel series starring Will Poulter and currently gearing up for production. Hell, even HBO is taking another crack at author Philip Pullman's seminal work with His Dark Materials set to debut this month.
Well it seems as if another great fantasy series is on the way as Playground Entertainment and Lionsgate have teamed up to bring the masses a television adaptation of Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe series. Pierce published the first book Alanna: The First Adventure thirty-six years ago and has since released an astounding twenty-one novels in the series. Take that George R. R. Martin!
If you're not familiar with Pierce's prolific work, here's a brief synopsis:
"Tortall and its surrounding countries is a medieval fantasy universe, the home of an interesting assortment of heroes, many of them girls. There is military danger from neighbors like northern Scanra, eastern Tusaine, and worst of all, imperial Carthak in the south, with its ever-hungry slave culture and its greedy mage emperor. Pirates from Carthak, Scanra, and the Copper Isles haunt Tortall’s eastern shores. In a country both large and sparsely policed, there is always a risk of conflict, be it from rebel nobles, the impoverished people of the eastern hills, or the barely vanquished Bazhir tribes."
While the books may be set in a mythical world of lords, ladies and magic, the series tackles many modern themes. Issues such as lust. love, coming of age, feminism, diversity, class strife, and LGBTQ themes are all addressed at various times in the course of the novels and short stories.
The television series is still in early development although the search has begun for possible showrunners. Colin Callender, Scott Huff, and David A. Stern will executive produce. Playground Entertainment's move is significant in that it will mark their first foray into a major television franchise. No word yet on if Pierce herself will script any of the episodes but it remains a distinct possibility.
As an avid science-fiction and fantasy reader I have to say that this marks the first time I'm hearing of Tamora Pierce or her novels. However, it sounds like the novels have all the ingredients for successful fantasy fare. After all if you publish almost two dozen novels over the course of three and a half decades you must be doing something right! The series itself sounds like it's very female driven so it will be interesting to see who they cast and how the showrunners will make the program appeal to a broader audience.
So what say you guys? Have you ever read Pierce's novels? Are you excited at the prospect of a Tortall Universe series? Sound off in the comments below!